Calls for regulation of fitness supplements shipped to Australia

The Australian swimmer Shayna Jack and her coach deny that she deliberately took a banned substance in the lead-up to the FINA world championships, suggesting instead that supplements she ingested may have been contaminated.

Some drug experts say supplements bought online - and often from overseas - can contain unmarked and dangerous ingredients.

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ELEANOR HALL: Now to the calls for the regulation of fitness supplements being shipped into Australia.

The Australian swimmer Shayna Jack and her coach deny that she deliberately took a banned substance in the lead up to the FINA World Championships, suggesting instead that supplements she ingested may have been contaminated.

And some drug experts say supplements bought online, and often from overseas, can contain unmarked and dangerous ingredients, as Sarah Whyte reports.

SARAH WHYTE: Shayna Jack's swim coach, Dean Boxall, was peppered with questions this morning as he arrived back in Australia.

REPORTER: Do your swimmers keep diaries, do they keep a record of what they're taking.

DEAN BOXALL: No.

REPORTER: No?

DEAN BOXALL: No, not a diary, no.

REPORTER: That's important, isn't it?

DEAN BOXALL: I think she's probably now tracked one but no, no they don't.

SARAH WHYTE: Twenty-year-old Shayna Jack tested positive to a banned substance in preparation for the FINA World Championships in South Korea.

Dean Boxall says the pressure is taking its toll.

DEAN BOXALL: She's a 20-year-old girl going through a very, very tough time and she doesn't have an answer yet. She just doesn't know.

It's very difficult.

REPORTER: What's the next step?

DEAN BOXALL: I don't know. I've just arrived.

SARAH WHYTE: The banned substance Ligandrol that was found in Shayna's system during a mandatory drug test helps put on muscle mass.

In a lengthy Facebook post, Shayna says she'd never even heard of the drug, suggesting that the supplements she took could have been contaminated.

Drug experts and trainers say this is one of the biggest problems when buying supplements outside Australia or from online.

BILL SUCOLA: Nobody really knows exactly what they're taking because of the way supplement laws are, or the regulation of supplements, is quite lax.

So therefore anybody can take a supplement that they've bought over the counter, or they they've bought online.

Supplements do not have to be proven, safe, effective, pure, or that the potency on the label is what's in the product.

SARAH WHYTE: There is currently no regulation under the Therapeutic Goods Administration for supplements being shipped into Australia that you can buy online or from overseas, and Bill Sucola says because the industry is so unregulated, anyone can operate within it.

BILL SUCOLA: The easiest thing in the world is to source a supplier of the supplements and then you can buy some containers and you can have a graphic designer make you a label and you can put everything together in your living room and sell it online.

SARAH WHYTE: This month a coroner's report revealed a 21-year-old man from New South Wales died from caffeine toxicity after he unknowingly ingested a dangerous amount of a caffeine powder in a protein shake.

Some are now calling for stronger regulations.

Nial Wheat is an Associate Professor in pharmaceutical chemistry from the University of Sydney.

As a chemist, are you concerned that people can buy supplements over the internet that aren't regulated at all, and then ingest them in Australia?

NIAL WHEAT: The ability of people to buy supplements over the internet I think is a significant risk that we're not really paying enough attention to.

So people when they buy any type of supplement - and they don't just do it for bodybuilding, they might do it for other issues like trying to lose weight or if they have erectile dysfunction - are putting themselves at massive risk and I think we probably underreport a lot of the damage that these supplements are doing.

SARAH WHYTE: Coach Dean Boxall says now that they're back in Australia, Shayna Jack will continue to dispute the findings.

DEAN BOXALL: I don't know too much what is going on because, you know, we just had a competition, but we are going to fight. She has got a very good lawyer so we just have to stand up and hit some out of the park.